I'm a former senior editor at Fortune Small Business magazine, and I have written about entrepreneurship for publications such as Crain's New York Business, Fortune, Money, Working Mother, CBS MoneyWatch, and Good Housekeeping. I'm also co-founder of 2ookfreelancer.com, a community for indie professionals looking to build a thriving business in today's crazy economy.

The New Office is No Office

It’s no secret that employees aren’t as jazzed about traditional, corporate-style jobs as they once were.

A new survey by the Intelligent Office, a provider of “virtual” office space to mobile workers and small businesses, points to one way that companies can improve engagement: Give employees the freedom to work where they want.

Among respondents, 70% work from alternative locations regularly, and 49% spend between one and three hours at these spots. The main things they do from these locales is work independently, complete projects while traveling or hold meetings.

As for favorite hangouts, the survey found that 28% of employees like to work from coffee shops, while 29% prefer libraries, hotels and restaurants. Anyone who’s tried working from these alternative locations knows why: Fresh surroundings can break the routine and stimulate new ideas. Sitting in one spot, day after, day is an energy drain.

The online survey included more than 1,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada.

So far, freeing employees to find their own ideal work spaces hasn’t taken root much in U.S. While only 22% of American workers who use in alternative locations do so once a week, 40% of Canadians do.

I suspect that if American employers gave their workers more freedom to work like freelancers, they’d see huge increases in productivity. Have any of us ever looked back at our careers and wished we spent more time in a cubicle?

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Can anyone pay for an article in Forbes now? This “survey” is a company that offers virtual office services polling their own virtual office clients. Of course they believe in virtual officing – they’re already using the service.

Additionally, this survey was for just barely a thousand people, and was not even close to representative of the working population at large.

Elaine, as a journalist, how do you rationalize this? And I have a similar product to sell, so if I can conduct a similarly narrow survey for my own commercial interests, please let me know. I wasn’t aware that was possible at companies of your size and stature.

Matthew, I’m sorry you did not find the article valuable. It’s not uncommon for companies that cater to small businesses to survey their clients on everything from their political views to their financing strategies. As you point out, it’s important recognize that they are, in fact, polling their clients–and that the samples are not as representative of the business population at large, as, say one conducted by Gallup might be. However, I have found that these surveys often do point to interesting trends and don’t feel that they should be dismissed out of hand. This poll said that companies were increasingly letting their workers conduct business in remote locations, such as libraries and coffee shops. In covering career trends and entrepreneurship regularly, I have found that this is true, at companies of all sizes. Do remote work arrangements work for all types of companies or all workers? No. But I don’t think one can deny that more companies are tapping the power of improving technology and encouraging employees to work virtually–often because office space is expensive or the talented people they need live in other cities–and they are giving workers latitude about where to do so, whether it’s from home or Starbucks. There’s a considerable body of research and anecdotal evidence showing that many workers crave more flexible workplaces, including flexible locations, so I don’t think this trend is going to go away. I’m actually surprised that it’s taken so long for companies to embrace it.

Hi Elaine. I agree with a lot of what you said. It’s been a powerful trend for a while, and as someone that worked with Intelligent Office on and off for several years, it was a little frustrating to see their inability to take over the marketplace. Their chronic mismanagement has been well documented by both outside consultants and franchisees.

But my main point is that your article, from it’s opening, is focused on “employees,” and most of the people surveyed were not employees. Most are lone entrepreneurs, or small business owners with a limited staff. Also, I didn’t think you really disclosed the promotional nature of the survey and their sharing it with you.

But I definitely agree with you it’s an exciting trend, and it won’t be long before it catches on in a more definitive way. It’s a real failure of companies like Regus that they haven’t become more mainstream. The desire’s there. The tools are here. As a small player Intelligent Office can’t really accomplish very much, but Regus is huge and doesn’t have that excuse.

My company, Astrius, makes tools available for entrepreneurs and landlords to open their own suites, and this is really the future, far more than expensive, controlling franchise options that aren’t worth their royalty fees.